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WV CHIP to shut down in February unless Congress allocates funds

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WV CHIP to shut down in February unless Congress allocates funds
By Erin Beck, Charleston Gazette-mail

The board of directors for the West Virginia Children’s Health Insurance Program voted Wednesday to shut down the CHIP program on Feb. 28, if Congress doesn’t allocate funding to the program soon.

CHIP provides health insurance to children whose parents make too much for Medicaid, but make less than 300 percent of the federal poverty level.

Congress let funding for the program expire Sept. 30, the end of the federal fiscal year.

State officials had said in early October that West Virginia had enough funding that had been allocated, but not spent during the fiscal year, to continue paying for the program until early 2018. CHIP became 100 percent federally funded in West Virginia after the Affordable Care Act, also called Obamacare, boosted funds to the program.

CHIP board members voted on the plan Wednesday morning, following a discussion focused on the need to transfer children eligible for the CHIP program from PEIA to CHIP.